10.29.2012

RAGE. It's not just the name of id's latest game. As it turns out, the name isn't so much of a metaphor as it is the actual physical product itself. Maybe that doesn't make much sense, but you have to understand that whatever the fuck is in that $60 dvd case, it sure the fuck isn't a god damned video game.

So, I've got this video game sitting here, right in front of me, and I can't play it. Why? I don't know. I've been searching for a solution for an hour now and nothing really works. What I've found out is terrifying. For one, the game isn't even on the fucking disc. I'm sorry, the three discs. For two, even if the game is installed on the fucking computer it WILL NOT RUN. FOR NO FUCKING REASON.

Just to reiterate:

- The actual fucking game is sitting right FUCKING NEXT TO ME
- It is already INSTALLED ON THE MOTHERFUCKING COMPUTER
- Despite that, because I'm not the person who installed it, I can't PLAY OR EVEN INSTALL IT

I CAN'T PLAY A FUCKING GAME I HAVE SITTING RIGHT IN FUCKING GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF FAGGOT ASSED CUNT-SWALLOWING TURD WAFFLE SHIT-SUCKING BALL-LICKING FRONT OF ME.

7.22.2012

There's a new Ariel Pink thing happening. After touring the entire planet like four times, he finally got the whole live outfit (R-real, Tim, ...Aaron, and... the fourth one...) in a studio and wrote a whole fucking album of NEW things (except the cover), which is 12 completely NEW songs, not just a rehash like the "corporate sampler" was (which wasn't ALL old stuff, but that was certainly a large chunk), one of which is available already thanks to 4AD.

He's ALSO going to be by Austin on September 7th and then at the Granada in Dallas the day after.

Naturally, I will be making both.

And that's not a "maybe" thing. I'm GOING to both. That's the end. It's non-negotiable.

So what is post-BT Ariel like? From what I can tell so far, a little more coherent, and sort of '82-'86 sounding. Sort of like a soundtrack to an 80's teen movie. That's kind of a new directing to take hauntology in, near as I can tell, if only because it's so specific, but then again, it's not like other people haven't been specific before.

And I think the only reason it does sound so specific is because I'm used to a really nebulously placed Ariel. Sure, Somewhere in Europe/Hot Pink is as 70's punk as you can get, and Among Dreams or Shower Me in Lipstick is obnoxiously 86, but still, MOST of his output is confused and mixed and muddled as far as pinpointing exact styles go, and that's part of the reason I love him so much. Geneva does her specific period style, WaVVes does his, and Ghost Box do their thing, but Ariel was always very fluid and free-form. In fact, the earliest stuff that still exists online is borderline, and sometimes just plain industrial in its construction. Equus and Rainy Den both come to mind.

The whole album is likely to run the gammut again. Even flirting with 90's stuff, which is traditionally not his style since he's been active SINCE the 90's, but Butt House Blondies certainly heads in that direction. I'm only really getting into this because a post that just says "omg new Ariel Pink I'm so happy I could burst" is sort of pointless.

But it does raise an interesting question: what is POST-Hauntology? Or, where do we go from here?

See, the whole thing about hauntology was that, after John Cage, concrete, industrial, minimalism, sampling, and music that writes itself, what else is there to do but lather, rinse, repeat? Hauntology took that and ran with it, but not with current trends, but old one. Looking back several decades, taking those themes and styles, and revisiting them. Turns out we weren't really DONE with them yet. There was so much more to do. Last decade was really nuts too, we had everything. 70's, 60's, 80's, and even 90's. Some even went waaaay back and did 20's sounding ethereal soundscapes. For various reasons. Chiptune music exploded, and with the advent of youtube being more important than the radio, suddenly there was a way for EVERYTHING to reach its intended demographic. There were some trends, sure, but if you wanted it, it was there.

Another aspect of revisiting older styles was the actual "haunting" part of it. "Music that sounds older than it is" is an incredibly shallow descriptor, and something no one actually does on purpose. And I mean that, too, no one who's any good at it does it on purpose. There is some sort of bizarre sub-species of nostalgia associated with it. It's not really "boy howdy I miss the old days" but sort of like... um... this is hard to explain.

You know that feeling when you listen to an Ariel Pink song for the first time and it's just so inherently familiar? Like you've known it all your life? But it's sort of weird and alien? Like the 70's or 80's of a different timeline where disco never died or something? It's sideways nostalgia, but... even that doesn't quite get it.

It's very haunting, I guess is the best term.

But now that it has been explored enough for people to become familiar with it, and it to ooze into every facet of popular culture (except Hollywood, who still hasn't gotten the memo), and long enough for solid trends to develop (the 80's obsession from 2008 onwards becoming connected to chillwave, for example), what's next?

Is it now "done?" Is there more out there to discover or do? Are we stuck in a perpetual cycle of repeating ourselves like modern fashion is? With the ability for all tastes to find all markets, does it matter? Is there anything left?

I don't really know. What I DO know is that I've been sort of ambivalent about music lately. I've been mostly listening to Firesign Theater and Psychedelic Archaeology. Ariel was touring Mars and I couldn't be bothered to keep up with anyone else. I don't know what Geneva or WaVVes or Telepathe or anyone is up to anymore.

This is mostly because Trish Keenan had to go and die on me. I've been avoiding a lot of things because of that.

And I don't really HAVE a guess about what's next, because I don't know enough about what's going on anymore to comment. I feel sort of lost in the whole thing now. Maybe oversaturation is partly to blame and the bubble will burst or something. Maybe we'll go back to Romantic-era hauntology. Maybe we'll do hauntology-hauntology. Not sure how that would work but whatever.

But considering what happened to noise (homogeneity, nothing left to do, not really intimidating anymore, etc.) it's not likely there's much left to do there. I remember hearing about a new NON album, which doesn't seem to be forthcoming at the moment, that would be really intense, since Boyd was the only one who ever seemed to "get it." Noise is noise is noise is noise, but when you DO something with it, that's when it turns into something special. Carnis Vale and Embers come to mind.

Anwyas, this is getting long so I'd better cut out.

Oh, the Deacon IS a xenomorph, just not a jockey alien. Lindelof seems to be implying that it's an egg-layer, too. Don't know what that's all about. For the record, I liked Prometheus better than the last Alien movie, because its cons and pros cancelled each other out, so all that's left is whether or not you have a special like for Alien movies, which I do, so I think it just barely squeezes out ok. AlienS vs. Predator (which doesn't need the subtitle because it's alienS vs. and not alieN vs., which is just one more stupid aspect of that movie) has too much weighing against it, with the only real positives being the continually masterful work of Tom and Alec as well as the introduction of the Praetorian into the film series for the first time. OH! And Ms. Yutani makes an appearance, and they finally explain how we invented FTL so fucking fast. Other than that, the movie is a mess. Prometheus > AvP:R.

This list is just for fun, though. In reality, AvP and Rez are about equal in my books, and I have a love/hate relationship with the original movie that straddles the line of how I feel about Prometheus even though I definitely like Alien more than the movie where Space Jockey look like humans and also created humans by seeding Earth with DNA even though RNA came first and if they just dropped DNA then why do other lifeforms on Earth besides humans exist and... ok, I'm not going there. :/

6.02.2012

Prometheus has been out in at least England and France for a number of days now, and with the gracious spoilers of the cool crazy euros at www.prometheus-movie.com I have more than enough information on the monsters in it. Which is, you know, the whole fucking point of the movie.

This deal here is being written with two things in mind: trying to get some common names out into the public (prolly won't work but whatever) and to examine what connection these creatures have to the xenomorph breed of alien from all those other movies. Let's start at the beginning.

BLACK GOO

Now, I want to make it clear that I haven't SEEN the movie yet, it won't come out here for 5 days. Therefore all knowledge I currently have is extracted from what others have told me. Without this first hand experience, my understanding of easily the most enigmatic aspect of the monsters, the black goo, is going to be pretty bare bones.

I know that those ampules/canisters/urns are either made or or contain or are leaking this black goo substance. When the atmosphere inside the buildings they are contained in changes, there are some weird optical effects with the goo that signals some sort of change. I haven't seen exactly what happens, so I have no freaking clue what the deal is with this stuff.

What I know for sure is that the goo turns things into other things.

In the opening scene, an engineer (a term I've started using to refer to these bastardized retarded versions of the actual space jockey from alien) drinks the goo or something, and his body dissolves... then there's some stupid bullshit about Ridley flunking history class but that's not important. Think of it like the Elder Things who, in At the Mountains of Madness use Ubbo-Sathla's tissue to genetically engineer Shoggoths as organic tools that can form any organ necessary, but one of their experiments escapes and, 4 billion years later, you have the current roster of Earthlings. Lovecraft's monsters go back to the beginning and offer a way cool version of panspermia that, while still stupid because it doesn't address the fact that the Elder Things still had to have evolved on their own to begin with, at least doesn't interfere with real world knowledge even 80 something years after the story was written.

In Prometheus, the engineer creates DNA in the Cambrian period, when animals were old hat in the real world.

So, whatever.

But it's wishy washy. Expose some indigenous LV223 worms to the black goo and they turn into a Millbworm. Humans exposed to it become something only called a "Gray Man" so far. Except not every time, I think. It's hard to tell.

Whatever the specifics are, we can be sure the black goo is a substance that alters the DNA of the organism it comes in contact with. Yes, this means engineer have DNA. And Aliens, but we already knew that since they can be cloned.

LV223 WORM ---> MILLBWORM

Iapetus over at prometheus-movie.com came up with this name after I became exasperated with the sheer volume of names for the same thing. Cobrahugger, Cobralien, Xenocobra, Protohugger, etc. None of those work because:

1. It's not a hugger
2. It's not a xeno
3. It's not proto anything

"Cobra" sort of works based on the flaring of the wings and the pose it strikes prior to attacking, but "Millbworm" is a much cooler name as far as I'm concerned.

What I know about this adorable little fellow is that it is the result of a goo-mutated indigenous alien worm from LV223, and that it kills by jumping down a victim's throat. It's also adorable.

GRAY MAN

The second stage here is the only one that's actually in the movie. The gray man doesn't mutate into a xenomorph, this is just the only picture I have of it because... well, it's stupid looking.

Just some sort of crazy guy with a messed up face. Nothing to see here.

The real story is that Holloway, who is also exposed to black goo, has sex with Shaw at one point, leading to the creation of the... liverburster I called it at one point, but the truth is the difference between a "liverburster" and the bodyhugger is just size.

The creation of this thing is one part black goo and two parts human. This is important because the goo seems to affect Fifield and Holloway differently, and as we'll see with the bodyhugger, this is a process that MUST have occured many times before, so I think the complicated haphazard process in Prometheus is atypical, and the gray man is a sort of mutation that wasn't supposed to happen.

And remember, goo + engineer = earthlings. That includes humans, who are central to the creation of the bodyhugger in this film.

All I'm saying is that Prometheus makes it look like an accident when it's clearly intentional, so the Gray Man is probably not the REAL reason the bodyhugger is born. It just worked out that way.

BODYHUGGER
"Liverburster" form. The featureless-chestburster looking end facing the camera is actually analogous to the mantle of a squid. The "tails" are actually five tentacles arranged in a star shape... exactly like an Elder Thing.

This is a doodle by Blood from prometheus-movie.com and, as you can see, in the center of these tentacles is a facehugger ovipositor. This creature shares a function with the facehugger, but the results are different...

...maybe.

At any rate, it implants the "proto alien" into it's host. Which then bursts out. Sure, sure, sounds familiar and everything, but the thing is, we don't know what the hell a "proto alien" acutally is. So whether or not this thing is effectively a facehugger is completely unknown. It also isn't very important, either, because of what might possibly be inferred from the murals.

PROTO ALIEN

The "Proto-Alien" certainly is related to the xenomorphs, this can be assumed safely based on the appearance, because it wouldn't look like this if it wasn't the intention of the filmmakers to imply a connection with the previously seen xenomorphs.

WHAT the connection is is completely unknown.

One idea that a lot of folks seem to be implying for no good reason is that THIS is the Jockey Alien we've been waiting for for 33 years. This is a totally valid possibility. If this is the case:

1. it means the bodyhugger really IS a facehugger, but that...
A. it implants adults into the host rather than chestbursters OR
B. this is the Jockey BURSTER, and just so happens to have fully developed limbs sort of like the bambiburster, and this might explain the absence of a tail.

However, it could be a completely separate branch of creature, a cousin of the xenomorph, if you will. In that case some possibilities are:

2. This creature isn't a "Jockey Alien," but a "Jockey Proto-Alien." As in, this is the base, not the variation
A. So if this creature had a similar life cycle to the known xenomorph and somewhere along the line facehugged a dog, the result wouldn't be the "Dog Alien" we've already seen, but a unique variation potentially called a "Dog Proto-Alien."
I. Which brings us to the logical conclusion that the "strain" or "branch" of xenomorph we are already familiar with is simply the result of a bodyhugger impregnating not an engineer, but something else, most likely a human.

That last bit happens to be my own personal theory at the moment, but just to be clear, my endorsement doesn't mean I know anymore than you do. In fact, I probably know less, since I haven't even seen the damn movie yet.

The last of the popular theories is that this really is a PROTO alien and:

3. The creature we see here is somehow responsible for creating the known xenomorphs in their current form through some unseen process and this is merely a proto-form caste early in it's development.

There is one theory, however, that is not dependent on any of these previous assumptions, and could be true of all three. Remember this mural?

It's been noted that it appears as if the figure is wearing a crest similar to a queen alien, but the body seems "off" from a normal xenomorph. One logical conclusion upon seeing the proto alien is that this figure represents the "queen proto alien." Now, this could mean a jockey alien queen as a normal xenomorph, it could mean that this branch of the bodyhugger ALSO has a queen stage, or it could mean this queen might be a missing link between these prototype creature and the advanced xenos from the other films.

We just don't know.

However, I really need to step in for a second and say that Ridley doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who is capable of coming up with ideas this interesting and complicated. And Lindelof "wrote" lost. So, these chuckleheads have no fucking clue and I guarantee they didn't come up with an answer to reveal in Prometheus 2. In fact, Ridley already said that Prometheus 2 will have even less to do with Alien.

So, it follows that, if we're shown something that look like a queen form of the alien at the end, it's probably just that: a Queen Alien molted from the proto alien. This pretty heavily implies the proto alien is effectively the jockey alien, because I sincerely doubt the ability of these writers to come up with such a cool idea as a branched xeno tree.

But then again, maybe I'm dead wrong and it's not that at all. WE JUST DON'T KNOW.

So please, for the love of pete, stop calling it a fucking xenomorph. You have no proof.

5.27.2012

From what I've read on the IDW forums, apparently IDW now has something like 20 additional kaiju added to their roster of licensed character. With the previous 13, that makes 33. I say "something like" because it didn't sound like an affirmative "yes we have exactly 33 monsters," it sounded more like "yeah, whatever, I guess, it's not like it's important."

:/

But 33 monsters is interesting because, throughout Godzilla's screen life there have been (give or take depending on what you count as a separate monster) 50 kaiju. Now, that's monsters that share the screen with Godzilla specifically, meaning I'm not counting Dogora, Matango, Dogora, Sanda, Dogora, Gaira, Dogora, Maguma, Dogora, or any other kaiju that didn't specifically co-star with Godzilla. It also excludes MOST of the Zone Fighter monsters, because Godzilla was only in 4 episodes.

So far, the only confirmed additions are Jet Jaguar, Sanda, and Gaira. So two of those are more correctly Frankenstein monsters, and this widens up the scope to include, potentially, any Toho kaiju.

Any Toho kaiju that requires you to license to use, and that they can legally license to another company. License. When I say "50," it's not a legal list, so there's some uncertain areas. But, overall, I think we are at a position where we can logically break down the total Toho stable and infer which creatures they have.

The real reason I'm doing this is because Prometheus looks really boring what with the "I'm really pretentious about monster movies but I want you to take my humanoid aliens seriously" nonsense and lack of it coming out fast enough (sure they ruined the space jockies, but there's going to be a NEW Giger-esque monster! It's gonna be so cool, trust me). Since Godzilla #1 came out (that is a fucking awful title, by the way, give it a subtitle, please) I've made the conscious decision to head back to the franchise that is still fun and awesome.

So, anyways, on to the list! :D

1. GODZILLA - duh. 1
2. ANGUIRUS - original 13. 2
3. KING KONG - hahaha, never going to happen.
4. OODAKO - A giant octopus, not a licensable character, despite being co-starring with Godzilla, King Kong, AND Frankenstein... sort of
5. MOTHRA - original 13. 3
6. RODAN - original 13. 4
7. KING GHIDORAH - original 13. 5
8. EBIRAH - Hard to say. Doesn't seem like it's worth the effort to me, though. However, after writing the rest of this list and realizing I miscounted somewhere, I realize I have one spot left that, after ambiguities had been disqualified, was basically a toss-up between Ebirah and Dagarlah, and I think I'll see an Ebirah comic before I see a Dagarlah one. 6/1 assumed
9. OOKONDORU - another monster that's not actually trademarked.
10. MINILLA - ...naaaaawwwww, they wouldn't license this thing.
11. KAMACURAS - They've got Kumonga, and these two have a knack for showing up to a party wearing the same dress. I'd like for, as I originally assumed, someone actually gave a damn about Kumonga for once in his life, but clearly that's not the direction IDW chose for the character, and their disregard for it's originality guarantees they're going to make a one-panel appearance in "Godzilla #whatever," and in the same panel no less. 7/2 assumed
12. KUMONGA - original 13, although everyone at IDW seems to hate him. 8/2 assumed
13. MANDA - DUH. It's fucking MANDA. You know she's in there somewhere. 9/3 assumed
14. GOROSAURUS - I want this SO bad. Most other showa monsters have reappered in some form during the Millennium series, but Gorosaurus got left out. He's really one of the most gorgeous looking kaiju I've ever seen, and has been criminally underused. I would say I think IDW will continue the trend, but looking at the list, it really seems like there's a good chance he's in. 10/4 assumed
15. BARAGON - Maybe a decade ago, this would be a toss-up. Haha, just kidding, Baragon is for Japan what Anguirus is for westerners. He's totes in, no worries. 11/5 assumed
16. VARAN - I can't understand this. Varan isn't actually "in" a Godzilla movie, but there is a shitty prop waved around for a combined total of 5 seconds throughout all of DAM. The original movie was absolutely gorgeous looking, but rather mediocre. I don't HATE Varan, I just find it impossible to have an opinion. He's very cool looking, sure, and he's incredibly fun to play as in Unleashed, but I guess what I'm not understanding is why anyone would be so motivated to care about him on the same level of Gorosaurus, Biollante, or even Bagan. And Varan fans really do get pretty crazy about him. I'm not knocking that at all and too each his own, but in the context of a list like this, I'm weighing the objective pointlessness of licensing the character with its bizarre and curiously motivated fanbase. I don't know if one of the dorks at IDW is in the Varan camp or not because I can't tell Varan fans apart from other people. They're like Asians to me. I... I guess? Really stumped here, don't know if the fanbase if enough to justify this, but it's the ONLY reason they would do it. Personally, if they get Varan I figure they have a mandate to make the character interesting for once. He has the potential for personality, so I'm sure you could do SOMETHING with this guy. 12/6 assumed
17. GABARA - Gabara is very one dimensional in his only appearance (I'm talking about Godzilla stuff, mind you, but it isn't like his Greenman appearance added any special context for him or anything), in that he is a dream personification of a bully that doesn't even exist in the analog world. A dream monster is an awesome idea, though. Also, he stands out among all the other Toho kaiju for having a wildly different design style than the others. He isn't the weirdest, he's just a traditional oni turned into a kaiju... and that's so far removed from all the other Toho things. I really want him to see some action, but I don't think there's room for such a one-hit wonder.
18. HEDORAH - original 13. 13/6 assumed
19. GIGAN - original 13 I'm told, but I've never seen him, so it might be a lie. 14/6 assumed
20. MEGALON - How do you have Jet Jaguar and NOT Megalon? Most recently appeared in Justirisers (under a different name, but I'm not blind) and has the somewhat dubious but never outright bad reputation of being the climax of the goofy 70's asthetic. Megalon feels so essential to some because he's proof that even in the worst of times, Godzilla is one entertaining mother funker. Megalon is in or I'm walkin'. Funky walkin', that is. 15/7 assumed
21. JET JAGUAR - confirmed. 16/7 assumed
22. ZONE FIGHTER - it can be safely assumed that the rights to Zone Fighter are... complicated, that said, even if they weren't, I can't see IDW giving any number of shits about any of the ZF kaiju. Not even Zandolla, which is a shame, because Zandolla is awesome.
23. WARGILGAR - ZOOOOONE...
24. SPYLER - DABURUUUUU...
25. ZANDOLLA - FAITOOOOOOOO!!!
26. JELLAR - Fun Fact: Not an original Garoga weapon, but a native inhabitant of Planet Jellarl. They added another "L" to the end of the name. This was a real monster Godzilla fought. Megalon wasn't the weirdest monster Godzilla ever fought, just the weirdest one most folks know about
27. KABUTOGIRAH - I can't help but thinking this name was supposed to be "Kabuto Killer," but some guy put the little quotation mark thingies in the wrong place and changed "Ki" to "Gi," and now the name is just nonsense.
28. JIKIRO - Is a recurring kaiju in the ZF series. Does that make it important? Not really. Cool powers but seriously stupid looking.
29. MOGURANDA - Like Jikiro, only just barely counts. There's a scene where some kaiju are getting zapped by a pokeball beam or something, and you never see Jikiro or Moguranda in the episode after that (some capsules were found by Zone et co), but it's still way more screen time that Varan ever had in a Godzilla movie.
30. SPIDEROS - I've seen this name as "Spider Uros." It's very silly, but I know why some folks interpret it that way. Obviously because of Toho Kingdom, but looking at the kana it reads, in romanji, "Supaidauros." Looked at from a point of view of directly interpreting kana into english it sure LOOKS like it's "Spider Uros," but if you just say the name out loud it's pretty obvious that's ridiculous. "-daur" has an "au" sound and one "r" sound, while "-der Ur" sounds retarded.
31. GAROBORG - Just another stupid ZF monster that isn't the three that are awesome.
32. MECHAGODZILLA - original 13. 17/7 assumed
33. KING CAESAR - Totally. Sure. Expect it. 18/8 assumed
34. TITANOSAURUS - original 13. 19/8 assumed
35. SHOKILAS - Toho Kingdom invented the name "Shockirus." There's no source for it, and the word never existed before one of the staff on that site came up with it. It's not the first time they've outright made shit up. Point is, it's Shokilas. Of course even if this required licensing, there's no reason to do it. Dark Horse created it's own version, and IDW already did the "climbing Godzilla" issue without Shokilas, and there's no other logical reason to ever use the overgrown sea louse.
36. BIOLLANTE - original 14. SHUSH. 20/8 assumed
37. GODZILLASAURUS - I count this as separate because, even thought Godzillasaurus:Godzilla is 1:1 SO FAR, Godzillasaurus describes an entire species of unmutated dinosaur. So all Godzillas must be Godzillasauruses, but not necessarily the other way around. Cuz of Prometheus, the idea of an "indirect prequel" where one might see a Godzillasaurus that ISN'T Godzilla, and never becomes such, suddenly doesn't sound quite as ridiculous, but hey, who would make that movie? As for whether IDW would use it... well, the thing is Godzillasaurus has to be licensed separately from Godzilla, and it's only useful for an origin story. But origin stories are just exactly the sort of thing a comic book would do. While I would like to think they would just say "we don't NEED that, what we NEED is Godzilla knocking an enormous Dogora out of orbit," it seems like with 33, they probably got Godzillasaurus in there somewhere.
38. MECHA-KING GHIDORAH - seems obvious enough. 21/9 assumed
39. BATTRA - original 13. 22/9 assumed
40. JUNIOR - This one is weird, because using this list means there is one Godzilla movie Godzilla doesn't actually appear in. For three films Junior is treated as a separate monster from Godzilla, until the end of GvsD where he BECOMES Godzilla. This is sort of a weird area similar to Godzillasaurus, but unlike Godzillasaurus, Junior has THREE separate licensed forms, Baby, Little, and Junior. If IDW chose to show a baby Godzilla, this presents a problem, because there are 3 or 4 different things to choose from. And three of them are really iffy because you're essentially buying the right to use Godzilla four times over, since Junior, as of the end of GvsD and GFW, IS Godzilla. It seems like a legal headache that could be avoided by simply not doing a story about a baby Godzilla, and I'm pretty sure that's what will happen.
41. SPACE GODZILLA - >:/ what a jackass. Yeah, he's in KoM #12, how appropriate for such a piece of trash. 23/9 assumed
42. MOGUERA - Sure, why not. Moguera seems to have a habit of popping up in places where people are indifferent to him. He is the fifth kaiju Toho cranked out, of the original six from the 1950's (is THAT why people like Varan? Because he's old?), and he seems to have a pretty solid seat at the Grand Council or whatever. 24/10 assumed
43. FAIRY MOTHRA - No room for this thing unless IDW wants to do something in the direction of the Mothra trilogy.
44. DESTROYAH - original 13. 25/11 assumed
45. ORGA - I feel sort of ambivalent about this guy, personally, and it's partly because the uniqueness of the monster that I really like about him in Godzilla 2000 was sort of immediately ignored in favor of just saying "the final stage of that particular aspect of this alien or aliens that are more mysterious than space jockies used to be when they were cool that attacks Godzilla but not when it starts trying to finish shapeshifting but in that sort of in-between stage where it does most of the fighting even though it's never really clear what this stage in it's life cycle is even supposed to be but whatever we need a new monster" and then just dumping him in the middle of the classic pantheon as this really poorly defined... thing. Obviously they have him, I'm just saying, you know, he's cool but on his own terms. He's not JUST an ugly grey hunchback, he's a... some sort of thing. 26/12 assumed
46. MEGANULON - Two trademarks, as the adult stage is its own thing in a legal context. If Megaguiras were to show up, Meganulon AND Meganula would need to be around to give it context, and Meganulon is the third/fourth monster off the Toho lot, so it's kind of a big deal. It won't directly fight other monsters and seems rather ancillary though. Hmmm...
47. MEGAGUIRAS - Well, one thing that could happen is if introduced in the KoM universe, all they have to do it suck the life out of thousands of normal dragonflies, and no one will care about the absence of Meganulon. Megaguiras, like Orga, seemed to have been forced down our throats in the aughts as being of the same stature of the more well known members of the pantheon, only with being related to Meganulon it seemed slightly less forced that Megaguiras saturated Godzilla merchandise for a while... slightly. I'm not really convinced she's needed, but I do think it will find a way to weasel its way in, with or without the Meganulons. 27/13 assumed
48. KAMOEBAS - eh. Would they ever use this monster out of context of the "Yog Trio?" It seems that, even after GMM, the association is too strong, and the character too obscure. If any of them appear, it will be Gezora.
49. ZILLA - pfffffHAHAHAHAHAHAHA good lord get real XD.
50. KAISER GHIDORAH - As much as I love the Kaiser, and as awesome as a comic book could make him out to be, I'm thinking that any role for this character can be filled by the original KG, seeing as how this KG is basically just the other KG but his equivalent for Heisei-powered Godzilla. If you're going to make world destroyer KG, they already have one, why splurge on two when you can talk Toho into doing other things... like Godzilla blasting Dogora out of the sky or fighting a giant Matango hive?

So that's 27 with 13 unconfirmed but assumed. Adding Sanda and Gaira makes it 29 and leaves room for four more Toho kaiju that haven't already co-starred with Godzilla in the films. My votes go to Dogora, Gezora, Death Ghidorah, and Bagan.

This is complicated by a couple things. For one, outside of the rigidly controlled Godzilla series, Toho doesn't really seem to be too concerned about trademarking certain things. Is Maguma a thing they have to specifically license? I don't think that would happen if it were, but still, do I need to count that? Or can IDW draw a giant walrus, not name it, and still come out on top? What about Matango? That monster belongs to William Hope Hodgson, but is in public domain, but also we're talking specifically about the film Matango. Is that a license-able Toho kaiju? Can't they just make a mushroom monster if they want too? The same motif appears in Yog-Sothery over and over and in truth, "Voice in the Night" is Yog-Sothery as well. And you don't need to license Yog-Sothoth from anyone. Lovecraft is dead (the racist bastard).

Bagan is totes a thing, but would they go there? My list suggests a position open for that very thing, but I don't know, this is just deduction. Maybe IDW picked up Gabara and Minilla and that dream is dead now. What about the post-showa non-Godzilla monsters? Mothra series characters are fair game, I would assume, but what about the Jupiter Ghosts? The Dragon from Princess from the Moon? Monsters from the Choseishin shows? Any of the Zilla cartoon enemies? Or, for that matter, Godzooky? What is and isn't fair game?

I have no clue. But, just to review, here is my guess as to the identity of the unknown 17 additional Toho kaiju IDW can now legally use (the bold is for emphasis, bitch):

With such a large cast now, I can bet you two things: They won't ask for anything else monster-wise, and they won't bother trying to come up with a new monster. I think it would be cool to have competent artists design a new monster, but, eh, no big loss.

But seriously guys, when the fuck are you going to do Godzilla X Trypticon. You realize there is an obligation to do this, right? It ain't like Dark Horse, they had an excuse, xenomorphs are tiny little buggers, Trypticon is perfectly city-sized... despite a city being his alt-mode (hahaha scale in transformers is completely ridiculous).

Sorry, I couldn't bring myself to just use one of the same two pictures floating around. So here's the big purple tyrannosaur.

I was watching this SNL episode the other day when update came on, and Seth Myers said something about the "largest feathered animal" next to a picture of what looked like an orange Dilong. I was like "neat, another feathered tyrannosaur. THAT'S interesting enough to make weekend update." I don't remember the joke either, because it wasn't very good, or because drunk uncle was so good the rest of update seemed like a waste of time by comparison.

Just today, I got the urge to look it up (which made me remember how pissy I get when a new extinct dinosaur makes the news and everyone describes it in what I like to call "retard language," and conveniently forget that the animal actually has a fucking NAME), and it took a while for it to register, but I'm now realizing that, at something like 9 meters long, this MIGHT actually be a big deal. I think.

Let me take you back in time, back before Tianyulong. The world was a very different place. People lived in sin and shunned the sun, dangerous mutants roamed the land in droves and science was no more sophisticated than banging two sticks together. These were truly the dark ages, when it wasn't immediately apparent that Ornithischian "quills" and Theropod feathers had a common source.

Back then, people still ran around like a chicken with its head cut off every time they found feather impressions in the extremely detailed Chinese rocks that I believe have to do with lakes and mud or something... well, I'm not an armchair geologist, you know.

Anwyas, so Dyzio is regarded as some bullshit about... I don't even remember, it's bullshit, though. "Feathered dinosaurs" isn't redundant yet, and generally the only dinosaurs that people admit to having feathers are the ones from China with impressions of them, because I guess logic is optional in cases like these. And I'm talking about the time when feathers weren't just limited in known specimens, but obviously in range. Maybe this will be a surprise to some of you, but maniraptorans are MOST dinosaurs by an overwhelming majority. The fact that all the little tropical feathered specimens from Cretaceous China happen to be... except for maybe one or two (and remember we're in a time machine, so they haven't found Guanlong yet) all maniraptorans shouldn't surprise anyone. Most folks interpreted this to mean only Coelurosaurs have ever had any kind of feathers (we knew about pycnofibres, but, again, the world before Tianyulong was a scary, dark place where nightmares live).

On top of that, all of the feathered dinosaurs at this point weren't very big. Maybe like 2 meters long for some of the raptors, but that's it. Because of this kind of attitude where, instead of interpreting this information to mean that a lot of different lineages of dinosaurs had feathers, they interpret whatever specific dinosaurs they find with feather impressions on to have feathers, and every thing else to be some sort of Jurassic Park-mutant-chupacabra-abomination-from-hell. Naturally. It was around this time I became aware that, aside from the more logical "we haven't found feathers on a carnosaur (remember, Dyzio doesn't count for contrived reasons), so only dinosaurs from the base of the earliest fuzzy one should have feathers (coelurosaurs)" there was what I like to call the "Elephant Rule."

See, in our post-Tianyulong age of enlightenment with free podphones for everyone where you can download your mother over a D6 FTL ADSFASDFGADF connection, it seems obvious that, in an environment where mostly the smaller, more delicate animals survived and/or attract attention, clearly that doesn't mean that ONLY animals of a certain size have feathers. But back then, there was this idea that, like Elephants aren't particularly hairy animals, feathers have a purpose in heat regulation, and above a certain size they aren't really necessary. Fair enough. Only, mammals aren't dinosaurs. It sort of makes sense, but a Loxodonta is only like 2 meters tall, maybe 3, and there are living dinosaurs that big that are covered in all kinds of feathers. Still, the notion that there is a size threshold where feathers stop serving any purpose and perhaps risk the danger of overheating has been something a lot of folks are expected to assume for the good of the country.

You might be able to tell that I never really liked that idea. Fast forward to our utopian post-Tianyulong society with hive-minds and floatr and mammoth-cloning and here I am looking for why no one has come forward about feathered sauropods. Logic dictates the earliest sauropodomorphs, at the very least, MUST have had some sort of hollow integument roughly analogous to pycnofibres, proto-feathers, and ornithischian quills. But alas, where are the fuzzy Panphagias? Even I sort of have to admit, as an endotherm myself, that at a certain point being fuzzy is a death sentence, especially in the Cretaceous, but what IS the limit? The sky? If you ask me, that's kinda too lame, but I suppose a fuzzy Amphicoelias MIGHT be a little out-there.

But then comes along Yutyrannus, at 9 meters long, which is the biggest fuck you to the elephant rule I've ever seen. Motherfucker isn't even "just some quills on the arm" ala Concavenator, he's straight up a giant Dilong.

So the only trend I can see here is that Ornithischian quills don't really follow the same rules as straight-up Theropod feathers. Other than that, it seems weird that a 9 meter long tyrannosaur is completely fuzzy while the 6 meter long Concavenator "only" has arm quills. In fact, I don't believe that in the slightest. Doesn't it make more sense to say that all they saw of an integument where the scaled belly and feet, and the quill nobs, and then took a exclusionary attitude and said that's all there is, rather than using deductive reasoning and saying "hey, carnosaurs had feathers too... maybe we should check out Dyzio again."

Anwyas, the point here was to just look at the "elephant rule" and what evidence there is to support it that I know of. So far, what we know about endotherms (me included) says that at some point a heavy coat is going to boil you alive, and that dinosaurs aren't mammals, so we can't expect it to work exactly the same, and so far we have not found a definitive limit for theropods, although it seems like Triceratops really is the elephant rule for ornithischians. That said, I don't REALLY expect advanced thyreophorans under 9 meters long to be particularly fuzzy, but you get the idea.

Feathers: I could have told you this stuff years ago.

Next up: Did Amphicoelias have advanced flight feathers? Inquiring minds want to know!

4.04.2012

A hell of a lot better than the first two. Wow those were terrible. And for the record, I'm not blaming it on any of the difficulties with the translation Aeon Genesis did, I'm blaming it on the fact that it's impossible to recruit demons (THE WHOLE POINT OF THE GAME) and not five minutes in you have absolutely nowhere else to go.

But those easily fixable problem were totally fixed in SMT3, and then some. In fact, other than the usual flaws inherent to the whole series (Cerberus = three heads. a five year old could tell you this.) there is only one thing I can find to bitch about: the camera angle. First person is not only doable, but pretty mainstream by 2003, so I don't understand why the vastly inferior third person camera was picked over what every other main series game (and more than a few spin-offs) had used.

But, when the only thing you can find to bitch about is the camera, and it isn't because it kills you, then you've got a winner.

So, for those of you who don't know what the Shins of Megaman's Tenuous grap on reality games are about, let me give you a little crash course:

Digital Devil Story is a late 1980's Japanese novel wherein some crazy Japanese kid writes a program to summon demons. But in a very, VERY loose definition. Case in point: Loki comes out of his computer and starts boning his teacher, and blah blah blah the kid (Akemi Nakajima) summons cerberus and has to set right what he once set wrong. If you're interested in a Japanese novel about Cerberus fighting Loki, there is a translation done by a fan floating around on a blog somewhere. I've never read it, but then again, I don't really care.

The story of MegaTen as most know it begins with a late 1980's VIDEO GAME (that's right, they skipped the movie phase and went straight to the game, an unprecedented move and one I can only think is mirrored in the Splinter Cell games) with a first person(!!!) viewpoint, wherein the player character (unambiguously Akemi Nakajima) must dungeon-crawl his way through some sort of dungeon that Loki is in.

The real kicker about the game, though, is that you don't just get Cerberus. You can actually talk to any demon you happen to run into, and try to negotiate with them into leaving, giving you items or money, or, and remember this is the late 1980's, get them to join you as your minion.

And maybe I wasn't clear on this earlier, but these demons are not new flashy modern characters, but the oldest of schools. "Cerberus" isn't a codeword, it's like, you know, Cerberus. The "demons" of the series are pre-existing gods, monsters, and heros from mythological cycles all over the world from all different eras. Fenrir, those cool Dogu statues, Quetzalcoatl & Tezcatlipoca, occasionally Cthulhu & Nyarlathotep, Sedna, Mara, Arachne, Yurlungur (as a rainbow serpent, but explicitly not Wanambi), Buer, Metatron, Dagon (yeah, it's Yog-Sothery Dagon, but still shows some Ugaritic love), Asherah & Anat (see, told you), Christine (the killer car), and FUCKING BAPHOMET all rear their heads at some point in some game in this huge labyrinthine franchise.

And you collect them and make them fight for you. Like Pokemon.

To drive home how cool this concept is, here is what kind of roster I'm currently looking at in SMT3:
Baphomet
Arahabaki (a slit-eyed, spaceman type Dogu)
Lilim
Succubus (totally not overkill, Succubus inherited an ice-type move, plus she's like level 37)
Uzume
High Pixie (don't laugh, she's the starter and if you keep her around she becomes Queen Mab)
Take-Minakata
Xuan Wu (the tortoise/snake from the ssu-ling? cardinal direction chinese guardian things)
and some others...

I mean, that's just cool. And remember, this is prior to even the earliest planning stages of Pokemon, but my post about the totally ludicrous bullshit "pokemon vs. digimon" war that never existed except in the heads of stupid children from the late 1990's will wait for another day. Just want to point out quickly that POKEMON is the rip-off. And it isn't ripping off digimon, it's just SMT for kids.

Anywhichways, after two Megami Tensei (means "Rebirth of the Goddess") games on the NES (first person games on the NES? Take that, id software :P), they made the jump to Super Nintendo with SHIN Megami Tensei. You might be aware that "Shin" which translates in english to "true" was used in context of video games as "Super" was here. They stuck that on a game for Super Nintendo to differentiate it from the predecessor or just make it seem better. Most consoles have a version of this phenomena, like "64" as a suffix, "Advance" as a suffix, cleverly inserting the initials "D.S." into the subtitle, stupid stuff like that. Shin Megami Tensei would of course mean "Reincarnation of the TRUE Goddess," but not literally. Sort of.

At any rate, the Super Nintendo games apparently catapulted the series to greatness or something, because ever since then "Shin Megami Tensei" was the headliner the whole damn media empire was labeled as. Sometimes referred to as "MegaTen" to acknowledge the pre-SNES titles and the books (which was a trilogy? There were definately two), Shin Megami Tensei was still the name plastered over a slew of spin-offs and assorted paraphenalia from 1995 or so onwards. And man, there are TONS of spin-offs.

So usually now if you say "SMT" or "MegaTen" it's like taking a shot in the dark. A little ironic since at first the series had a very simple chronology:

...and then it all went to hell. There were turn based strategy games, standard fantasy setting, top-down gameboy rpg's, and fucking persona where you can't even recruit demons, making that whole series overpriced firewood.

The confusing part here isn't that the series branched out, as this is what successful video games do, but that the games that weren't branching out, the actual next SMT games, were considered spin-offs.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner and Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers are a pair of "spin-off" MegaTen games that play exactly like the originals, are apparently in the same timeline as SMT If..., and what's more, Soul Hackers is seen by fans as a true classic. I don't understand the logic behind this, I'm not gonna lie, even though the "Devil Summoner" sub-series eventually developed something unique (it's not turn based in DS3 and 4), saying that it took 9 years for a sequel in the main series is a little bit more than a little misleading.

At any rate, there was definately a gap between DS2 and SMT3. Persona is to blame for this. Yes, I'm aware that Persona 2 is the only SMT game to feature Hastur, but you don't summon monsters in that game, you make them... "personas" or something. You can't recruit them, and that's retarded. People latch onto the things because they're just oozing with weeaboo pheromones, and the ramifications of Nyarlathotep being Hitler are lost on dumb shut-ins, but whatever. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about collecting all parties involved in Ragnarok so you can use them to kill god.

SMT3 is way different in the best of ways. You can really feel pokemon's influence here. It used to be that demons, unlike human characters, never gained experience. The only way to make existing minions stronger was to fuse them into higher-leveled ones. Here they not only gain levels like pokemon, they not only learn moves as they level up, but they EVOLVE like pokemon too. It's a little odd at first, but I don't think Lilim evolving into Lilith is really too at odds with the mythology of them. Lilim's are basically Lilith born from parthenogenesis, correct? Makes sense. Some stuff is a little weird, but none of the very few evolutions are very far from acceptable.

Leveling monsters up and gaining new skills is important to the psychological appeal of these games. If you were forced to fuse the lower leveled ones, you would never be able to pull together a dream team which is what really drives the collection and training aspect of pokemon. The inheritance of skills from fused demons also plays a big role, and makes demons customizable in a way leveling up alone wouldn't allow. All this means that you can put together any party you want, any monsters you want, and tailor their skills to fit any situation.

In the original games, if you could ever manage to recruit a single fucking knocker, you were limited to what skills they had, and your choices of monsters, and therefore skills, was limited to what you could run into. This sort of limitation is understandable in the early stages in a monster-collecting game, but those same limitations are going to follow you in SMT1 & 2. A short glance at a strategy guide for one will show that there are some bosses where, outside of grinding, you're bottlenecked into catching specific demons to fuse in order to get a hold of specific skills. I don't think I'm even half way through SMT3 yet, and thanks to the flexibility of the demons and the "demonic compendium" (Bill's PC), I have so many options it's not funny. In a series that has a widespread reputation for being fuck-you impossible hard, this is a VERY good thing.

But catching them all isn't your only priority (and that really is a priority, at first your limited summon-bank makes it look otherwise, but with the demonic compendium and the ability to summon any demon you've ever owned at any time, "catching them all" is a pretty good idea), another thing that SMT games are well known for are their dark themes, post-apocalyptic settings, philosophical quandaries, and heavy-handed aesops. Maybe.

One of the core elements of the series from at least the first Shin Megami Tensei is that the world (keep in mind, Japan blah blah isolationist blah blah xenophobia blah blah sun revolves around Tokyo bullshit) equals very over and YOU, a dumb kid, is going to use your demon summoning powers to carve the path of the new world order and reshape the remains as a paradise on earth, or a cesspit of murder and mayhem. Except not really.

SMT games use an alignment system identical to D&D. The primary division isn't between good and evil, however, but between Law and Chaos. Each game shows these paths in different ways, but they remain more or less consistent throughout the series. Typically, the Law path will be one devoted to creating a world where god (as in YHVH, the classical jewish/christian/whatever god) reigns supreme and the just live peacefully without fear. Of course, if you know anything about that particular deity, or indeed about christians or... fuck, religious people period, you're aware that this is a REALLY horrible fate. The upside is peace and order, the downside is living in a totalitarian military state where freedom and individuality are snuffed out like embers in the night. A world where good and evil are as concrete as the streets the angels slam your brother's skull into when they find out he used to think Metallica was pretty cool. In some, it can be as dark as only a kingdom for God and his angels, and sometimes is as light as "we totally wanted an honest to goodness peaceful paradise for all, but we're extremely naive, and don't realize Metatron is kind of a dick."

The chaos path is only slightly better. For what it's worth, they do have the right idea. This will usually take the form of a return to pre-human natural structure. We live and die by the might of the sword, to put it in a poetic way. At worst this is a bastardization of "might makes right" where demons are trying to compete with earthlings on the same level, and of course a bear can't kill Fenrir, so that' not exactly fair. They also, in the games, tend to focus on the "might" part, implying it to mean pure brute strength rather than an ability to adapt and survive. Of course, there are versions where literally nothing but demons exist, which is fine in some respects, since, again, these apocalyptic scenarios are mostly contained to the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. They can have it, I guess. At best, for example the chaos path in SMT4 (subtitled Strange Journey and without the "4," but it's been pretty explicitly stated that it isn't numbered because of the localization confusion this would cause) is straight up a return to nature for humans. Demons give us an ultimatum, and we lose the computers for swords and subsistence off the land in a very direct way. Not a bad idea, it doesn't remove your "humanity" and isn't cruel, but does serve to limit us in a way that is blah blah blah it's the hippy ending, and it's justified.

Then there's the neutral path. This, on one extreme, is the path where the protagonist paves the way to a new kingdom of freedom and individuality. Pain and suffering exist, but are dealt with, and not in a ridiculous overcompensating manner. Perhaps there is a new democratic government. Maybe humans go on living as they have, but form a pact with the demons and live peacefully with them. Maybe things go back to how they where, and the demons are sealed back into their hell hole. The other extreme is to simply tell all the other alignments to go fuck themselves, and reject everyone. Maybe nothing changes at all, and you're just stuck in post-apocalyptic purgatory. From compromise to nihilism, the neutral path is generally considered the "canon" path for various reasons.

This creates problems in gameplay. Demons also have alignments, and depending on what alignment you have, you won't be able to recruit demons on the far end of the spectrum. With limited potential for demons, this is pretty harsh, and usually means picking anything but the neutral path is probably a death sentence. Oh yeah, you really need to know what ending you want because of this. That's right, you need to choose a preset number of actions whether or not you agree with them in order to fall into one of the paths and play the game a certain way. On the surface, the philosophical aspect sounds pretty intriguing, but when it affects gameplay to the point where you can't get such-and-such item or weapon or whatever unless you agree with Yama the chinese judge of the underworld, then shit is clearly not what it said on the tin. Like so much in these games, GREAT idea, piss-poor execution.

SMT3, thankfully, doesn't have this problem. In place of the three static paths are "reasons." The following might be a bit of a spoiler, but basically the way it works is that there are three philosophies you can choose to follow that resemble the law/chaos/neutral paths but... aren't. They certainly don't affect what demons you can recruit either. Angel and Lilim on the same team? I've done it. So follow whatever you feel like makes sense. You know, like a Silent Hill game or something. I THINK I've been in situations by now in the game that have affected my ending, but I don't even care. I just answer all the questions honestly and I'll see what I get, which is EXACTLY what I expected in the first place, and SMT3 gets it right.

Even better, those three paths don't represent neutral or chaos at all, really. Actually, you aren't forced to agree with anyone. You can just tell them all to go fuck themselves. Or you can agree with Lucifer... I think? There's a lot of endings, and I really don't know what causes what, and that's EXACTLY how I want it to be.

So for all intents and purposes, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is the gateway game of the MegaTen series. SMT4 on the DS is a classic first person, alignment driven game that shares far more in common with 1 & 2 than SMT3 does, but it's a modern game, which I'm assuming means leveling up, skill swapping, and general playability. Also it doesn't assume Tokyo is the center of the universe, but Antarctica is, which is entirely accurate, as Antarctica is the most amazing place ever.

There's also the Devil Summoner games to think about, as 3 and 4 were localized here and are a few years old on PS2, perfect games to pick up for 10-20 dollars at a Game Stop. These two, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon take place in 1930's Japan, is an timeline where the... I wanna say Taisho... era doesn't end in 1926, but goes on longer than it did in the real world, alleviating some of that militaristic drive the country picked up in early Showa times that would eventually cause them to make really dumb foreign policy decisions. Your character is a "Raidou Kuzunoha," a title, not a personal name, who is magic and can summon demons somehow. Shit goes down and you gotta save the day. Two things about these games that are the most important issues:

I've heard you can only summon one demon at a time, and yet I've seen videos on youtube with Alice and... I think a Succubus summoned at the same time. So, maybe it's just one in the first, but more in the sequel. What's more, you can sort of guide their actions ala Digimon World, but generally they act on their own. So it's suddenly less like playing with pokemon, and more like having creatures with actual personalities ride into battle by your side. When you ride into battle with Alice and Baphomet... well, suffice to say, these games look pretty fucking awesome.

And what of the translated SMT1 & 2? Well, there are three main problems that kept me from enjoying those games:

1. Can't recruit demons no matter what I do
2. Don't know what anything is
3. Don't know what I'm supposed to be doing

I'm hoping that after enough experience with SMT3 and hopefully some of those others I have an interest in, my absolutely befuddled flopping around can be limited, if not eliminated. Nothing in the game tells you what anything is or does, so seeing a special move named "Mabufula" is just that. You have no fucking clue what that means, and no one is going to tell you. So some familiarity there should totally help, but what about the other things?

Well, eventually I'll have to cave and check out a walkthrough, which is kinda lame, but whatever. I've done it before and I can do it again. They ARE from the 1990's, of course, so this sort of thing should really be expected. But here's the kicker: I've heard that the reason I can't recruit any demons in SMT1 is because I alloted the points all wrong and I don't have enough of something or another to negotiate, which is a problem a walkthough might could help me with (but it doesn't change the fact that allowing the player to make the game impossible to win at the FIRST POSSIBLE INTERACTION is the single worst design choice in the history of video games), but the problem with that is, in SMT2, where your stats are chosen for you, I have the exact same problem. So the stats seem to be a copout. I would be interested in picking these games up again and seeing if I can't make more sense out of them, but this is a fatal flaw, and if I can't get around it they're too fucked to even think about.

Anwyas, I thought I'd post something, because I noticed I had two new followers. Not sure how that happened, but whatevs. Unlike youtube, where there's 30 people following me for no readily identifiable reason, here I can actually post stuff sometimes without any hassle. So, here you go, a wall of text about demon summoning games.

For the record, Aboriginal is the best pre-modern mythology, because it a) accurately describes landmarks from tens of thousands of years ago, making it obnoxiously old, and it's spread ORALLY, b) the myths are, because of this, based mostly on geology rather than entirely focused on creation myths or central sun gods, and c) Megalania god vs. Rainbow Serpent. That's just cool.

Aztec and Norse jostle for second. Goetic and Voodoo are up there, too.

1.25.2012

Just in time for the series to be over, Kingdom of Monsters finally managed to piss off it's last semi-fan by KILLING Minette and Mallorie, the Battra Twins.

Fuck you, Ciaramella. Fuck you and your stupid fucking face. Those two were the best thing to happen to Godzilla since Biollante. You're a faggot, and I hope your family dies in a fire.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there's none too subtle hints that the series will end with Space Godzilla, the absolute worst thing about the entire franchise, just showing up out of fucking nowhere for no fucking reason. Which would be the worst thing ever. Worse than Hitler.

Yeah, I went there.

So, I'm done defending this piece of shit. They started off really strong, but with weird stuff that made you go like "...wtf?" thrown in, like Japan just up and deciding a nuclear weapon is the only reasonable course of action against Godzilla when the monster has only been around for a grand total of five fucking minutes. The political satire is magnificent and hilarious. It's on par with Godzilla vs. King Kong for sure... you know, for the first couple of issues. Then the Lady Gaga expy shows up... with almost no resemblance to the real life Lady Gaga, which turns something that should have been topical and funny into something mean-spirited and insulting. Fact is Lady Gaga isn't hard to parody, but she's also not hard to understand. Her motivations, interests, and art are all put out in public display, and she's obnoxiously famous. There's no reason to paint a caricature of her that's just fucking wrong. There's no god damned excuse for "Girly Yaya." That was just awful, and it took away from Minette and Mallorie pages.

THEN of course there's issue 4, where we meet the second worst thing to happen to the series: Sgt. Steven Woods. WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY? I hate this smug asshole who thinks he can look down on everyone and everything like HE'S got all the fucking answers. "Everyone who isn't me is stupid and hates America." Go fuck yourself, author tract insert mouthpiece, you don't belong here.

And then I would try to rationalize this horrible, jack ass of a character with utter disdain for all humanity for all of the most selfish reasons (making him a hippocrite, by the way) by drawing comparisons to GMK. But I can't do that anymore, because logic and emotional backlash are fighting back.

You see, in GMK, groups of rebelious teens are shown to be responsible for awakening Baragon and Mothra. Dialogue from old timers tells us that it's all the younger generations fault that monsters are destroying Japan, since they don't have any respect for their elders or something.

But let's take a closer look at that. First of all, Baragon and Mothra are the GOOD guys trying to SAVE Japan. Heck, in KOM Girly Yaya was trying to stop the military from attacking Battra's egg, which would have ALSO saved the world from Battra hatching, making Wood's nonsensical hatred of her even more... bad. Another thing we notice about these supposed wild rebels in GMK is that they are NOT harmless teenagers by any stretch of the imagination. These are horrible monsters in their own right that harass and terrify people at night on motorcycles weilding chains. These people are straight up BAD guys. The group who inadvertantly summons Mothra are trying to CRUSH A PUPPY UNDER A ROCK.

Say what you will about whiny kids who didn't get a phonepad for decemberween, at least they don't FUCKING MURDER PUPPIES.

The last point here is that while many of Wood's complaints about the general cultural nosedive the U.S. has been taking is legit, the stuff we see in GMK is an exaggerated way of dramatizing the generation gap in Japan that is a hell of a lot more complicated than just "kids are evil." It's not at all coincidental that the third guardian monster, King Ghidorah, is awakened by Yukijiro Hotaru commiting suicide in Aokigahara. GMK makes a hell of a lot of nods to problems affecting Japan that are usually ignored or blown out of proportion. Suicide and the generation gap are very real dimensions of Japanese society, as are the war crimes commited by Japan in WWII and earlier, which is, of course, the reason Godzilla appears in that movie in the first place.

So, comparing the two, we have GMK, which weaves in all these ideas but never takes a stance, although the combined might of the tortured souls from WWII war crimes seems to wipe the floor with the other crap, yet never comes off as too pretentious or heavy handed, and certainly doesn't presume to have any answers...

vs. Kingdom of Monsters, where Sgt. Steven Woods spends no less than 8 pages telling us why, because the U.S. has a very high standard of living, we're all a bunch of filthy maggots who, if given the chance, he would willingly let die in the radioactive flames of Godzilla's nuclear beam because we like phonepads... but HE'S not the bad guy, and I'm supposed to SYMPATHIZE with this piece of human trash?

nuh uh. It doesn't work like that.

And, of course, to top it all off, in issue #5 we get new "art" by an, I'm assuming mentally challenged individual who's indecipherable scribbles (and I'm being NICE here) wouldn't look out of place in Maddox's new book.

...who then continues to piss out the worst drawings by an adult I've ever seen for the REST of the 7 remaining issues...

Oh right, and then Kumonga shows up for all of one panel. Can't forget that bit of gold.

Point is, KOM took my seemingly endless faith in it and just ran it into the ground as hard as it could as many times as it could.

So where does IDW go from here? It's obvious what they're thinking if you've seen that incentive to "preorder," which, by the way, is not something you can do with comic books, Legends #4. But, let's just take a look at some of the options available to clear the air of that awful stench that was KOM.

1. Only hire ADULTS who are actually capable of drawing to, you know, DRAW the comic books. I don't know if "Santos" is one of the writer's kids or a hobo they found outside the building, but he's not a professional artist, that's for DAMN sure. Fire him and get a professional please. Here are some options:

- Matt Frank

- Frank Parr

- Art Adams

- Phil Hester (the guy's good, why did you replace him in the first place?)

2. Biollante. The starting roster of 13 is ALMOST perfect, but Space Godzilla a.k.a. the worst big screen monster of all time just sticks out like a sore thumb. How much stupider can you get? To top it off, GvsSG is the WORST Godzilla... no, worst Toho Kaiju film of all time. At least Zilla was designed by Tatoupolis, you know? Space Godzilla is just something we need to all make a pact with each other to forget ever happened. The movie, the monster, everything. Let's just pretend that fucking thing never existed. PLEASE. More importantly, this is the slot Biollante was supposed to be in. I can't have been the only one who took it for granted that they would have gotten Biollante. Seriously, why don't they have Biollante? This needs to be fixed A.S.A.P..

3. Godzilla vs. Transformers. Duh.

4. Instead of these one shots that go nowhere, why no just make the damn series? Matt can clearly handle the concept of a one-shot the best, so just let him do all the ones where the story can be contained. Legends #2 was boring. Do a mini-series following Legends #3, since they are basically begging you for it with that ending. The team behind #4 seem to want to do the same, so why not do that too? Next time, rather than starting 5 independent stories with series potential at the same time, maybe just make sure the one-shots are actually contained stories? Then you can launch new series based off of the effectiveness of a creative team rather than which one had the largest sequel hook. Idunno, just seems like common sense to me.

5. Movie continuity. Kinda sick of starting off being dumped into the middle of a world who's rules I don't know with every single fucking issue. Please take some sort of effort to make the "legends" continuity, as it were, make sense. I never know when anything is supposed to be happening, or how I'm supposed to react to the introduction of a new character. I mean, since I know Miki from the Heisei timeline, her taking the time to visit some kid in the U.S. should be a HUUUUUUUGE fucking deal, but no one seems to know who the fuck she is. A little background goes a long way.

6. Specifically, someone needs to make a comic out of Godzilla X Biollante. You know what I'm talking about. At the coda of GMMG when they show us the huge vault of G-Cells (and presumably other monster tissue as well), and then in GXMG with that rose... and of course they manage to successfully clone Achelon in that same year, so... Biollante, plz?

All in all, I'm glad they're mixing it up after the first year. They've got so many oppurtunities available to them now, maybe after a year it's time they actually start USING them. I hate the idea of an "ongoing" series in the first place. You can't tell a story if it has no ending. Sequels are one thing, but in the middle of KOM I felt so lost and confused and there was just no direction at all. Dark Horse's stuff NEVER felt like that. They went from story arc to story arc, always with a clear sense of direction, never meandering around with characters you absolutely hated.

Because really, as a writer, one should understand that you actually can't go into a story expecting it to just go on forever. That's just not how it works.

1.05.2012

1954: Godzilla
1955: Godzilla Raids Again
1956: Rodan
1961: Mothra
1964: Godzilla vs. Mothra and Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster
1967: It is possible some iteration of Son of Godzilla without the titular character happened here, but I'm waiting until Kumonga's spotlight issue to be sure.
1971: Again, It's possible Godzilla vs. Hedorah happened in some capacity but without the superhero Godzilla, but I'll wait until Hedorah's issue to say anything.
1972: Godzilla vs. Gigan but with the following exceptions
- Anguirus attempted to take down Gigan AND King Ghidorah by himself and was rendered unconscious
- Godzilla arrived seperately, and probably never interacted with Anguirus, but beat both monsters on his own
1978/1979: Godzilla sinks a Russian nuclear sub and grows from 50 to 80 meters.
1984: Return of Godzilla with the obvious exception that Godzilla has been previously seen many times between 1954 and now. Miki's parents are killed in this rampage.
1989: Godzilla vs. Biollante more than likely happened, but this time around Miki actually WINS her fight with Godzilla, gains notoriety in the U.N.G.C.C., and begins a successful ESPer institute in Japan.
1991: The Return of King Ghidorah (2nd ver.) wherein the real King Ghidorah comes back from space to harass Earth once more, but is defeated by Godzilla after sinking Shindo's secret nuclear sub, bring Godzilla and King Ghidorah roughly the same size as each other.
1992: Possibly the first time Battra appears.
1993: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II with exceptions in that Baby Godzilla is never born, It's the surviving 1956 who appears and not the Adonoa one, who becomes mutated and enlarges to near-Godzilla size in the same way. Super Mechagodzilla is not completely destroyed, but there is something that happens that causes his further use to be taboo.
1995: Destroyah forms the same way as his original appearance. Godzilla doesn't die, and Junior isn't even there. Godzilla kills or nearly kills Destroyah, who either escapes or there is a second one later.
1999: Surviving monsters begin to live in the Ogasawara Islands, causing the place to be dubbed "Monster Island." Residents include Godzilla, Mothra (the adult surviving twin from 1964), Anguirus, Rodan (the surviving one from 1956), Kumonga, Battra, and King Ghidorah, who is amazingly more mellow these days.
2004-2010: The events of Godzilla Legends #3 pan out, Titanosaurus goes to live on Monster Island in the aftermath.
2010: Rodan's egg is found. From Godzilla Legends #2.
2011: Godzilla: Gangsters and Goliaths and Godzilla Legends #1
2012: Godzilla Legends #2

In a nutshell, that's what it looks like right now. Of course, as the last two issues of Legends have yet to come out, and IDW will surely add to this in other miniseries, hopefully including the conclusion of the stories seen in Godzilla Legends #1 and of course #3, I will either edit this entry or make a new one... depends on how I feel.

Godzilla Legends #3 pretty much demands that I start taking the IDW "Legends" timeline (as I'm calling it) seriously. Why? Cuz Miki. Yeah yeah Mugal was in it too and he's still an alien but whatever. Miki's the real star of the show. No, not Titanosaurus, Miki. Go figure.

Anwyas, here's the thing. The MOST LIKELY course of action that's going to happen is the Legendary movie GINO 2 will end up being... well, GINO 2. There's little I've heard that will save it at this juncture, and what I have is unsourced rumors. As well, the original out-the-door date of sometime this year looks like a lot of bullshit, and current dates have it set as late as 2014. That's a the 60th anniversary. Currently the longest Godzilla has gone between movies is 9 years, between 1975 and 1984. Waiting from the 50th to 60th anniversary will not only break a record, it will mean that, if the legendary thing IS GINO 2, and there's a very good chance it will be, then that means Toho will have missed an anniversary. That, or they rush one out the door just to have it done. Either way, that will be the day Godzilla dies. Hence my sudden fascination with Guilala.

...and the comics. Godzilla will have to take the walk of shame off his movie monster throne and go somewhere else. Oh, he's not going anywhere, he's Toho's biggest baby. But where will he go to? These IDW comics were my guess, and now after the early Kingdom of Monsters, Gangsters and Goliaths, and this new Legends series, I've made a good bet. There is of course, the inevitable Godzilla/Transformers crossover. This MUST happen. It isn't negotiable.

...why is Godzilla green?

Ok, so it's important. But if it's on the same level as the films, Godzilla's primary medium, we need to talk about continuity.

The Kingdom of Monsters continuity hasn't really extended beyond it's pages yet. We know that the Tunguska event is somehow connected with Rodan and KG has been up in the Himalayas for a long time. That's all there is to that. As for the books themselves, they work out a little something like this:

1-5 or so take place within a few weeks, maybe a month of each other
6 takes place long enough after that to have built Mechagodzilla
the rest take place a few months afterwards, when the U.S. government moves underground

All in all, I'd say the earlier stuff (up until issue six or maybe including it) take place in 2011 while the rest occurs in 2012.

So that's that.

Gangsters and Goliaths take place in a different continuity, and we aren't given any explicit background about it either. And it's clearly not the showa timeline, since it features a G-Force made Mechagodzilla, and a King Ghidorah that's still alive. I'm assuming, of course, the book takes place in 2011.

Just to make things waaaaaay more complicated than they need to be, the writers felt it necessary to include a whole shitload of monsters that don't add anything to the plot. Anguirus, Rodan, Battra, Kumonga, and Titanosaurus appear in the comic in bit roles for no fucking reason. Honestly, Mechagodzilla didn't really even need to be there. Which is a shame because minus the clusterfucked cast of kaiju G&G just screams mid-60's Godzilla movie in the best of ways. It's a lot like Dogora, actually, which is one of my favorite movies ever.

Oh yeah, Battra and King Ghidorah on Monster Island... because that makes sense @___@

So, before getting into the legends stuff, let's break down what G&G shows us:

Godzilla: Clearly alive. Absolutely no reason to assume it's junior. Probably the second, Lagos Godzilla. We have no idea of his previous actions, only that he exists now and isn't particularly seen as the 1970's superhero.

Mothra: The fairies are called "Elias" mostly, but say they go by many names, which serves to lend a bit of "everything counts" attitude to the comic, which we'll get into more with Legends. NO IDEA what generation of Mothra this is, only that it's fully grown already.

Anguirus: Same as Rodan, only not QUITE the same same as Godzilla (this will be important later).

Kumonga: Same as Anguirus.

Titanosaurus: Same as Kumonga, except, from what I can tell, about Godzilla's size ala Rodan.

Battra: Only seen in Larva form, doesn't seem to give a damn about Mothra or anything else, so it's not safe to assume this resembles the Heisei Battra in any way, shape, or form. Furthermore, whereas the Heisei Battra Larva stood nearly as tall as Godzilla (despite him being 90 meters LONG, not tall =/ ), this one seems quite small. It just acts like all the other useless monsters in the comic.

King Ghidorah: Not particularly safe to assume it's like the Showa version. It's certainly not dead like the showa version. We DO know that KG attacked Tokyo 20 years before the events of the comic. Assuming G&G takes place in 2011, that makes it 1991, the year Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah came out, but not the year it took place. So assuming that movie is canon to this comic isn't safe either.

Mechagodzilla: It's pretty much exactly the same as the Kingdom Mechagodzilla, that is to say, the heisei Mechagodzilla but with a built-in Garuda. So, it's like Super Mechagodzilla... without needing to combine. Notable in that it was once used as an anti-Godzilla weapon, but apparently it worked like crap, and even though the thing works perfectly fine, no one at G-Force thinks to use it even when there are 6 kaiju loose in Tokyo. So, i'm thinking it's pretty much EXACTLY like the Kingdom Mechagodzilla, because as the thing was fully operational, I don't see what else could be done to make piloting a perfectly fine super-mecha so taboo.

Monster Island: It exists. Monsters that live here do so of their own volition and with only Mothra's stern nagging to keep the peace. There is no government involvement, so DAM definitely never happened. No Gabara is visible, so it's probably not just the dream world. :P

The Legends mini-series does something a little different: every issue is a completely new almost-the-same continuity. Both G&G and Legends have clearly taken an attitude about the timelines that states "everything happened but not really I guess." Because of this, I'm choosing to synchronize all the Legends issues not only with each other, but with G&G as well. Why? I just told you: because everything counts until it doesn't, and nothing says it doesn't yet.

Go back to the Showa or Millennium timeline parts if you're confused about this seemingly anti-logic. But the basics behind the timeline of Legends and G&G seems to be, simply, this:

Assume everything from all the sources happened until we show you something contradictory. Don't worry about which Mechagodzilla exists in this timeline... we'll tell you when it's important. Also, both of them do, so that's not even an issue.

...pretty much.

Not pictured: every other monster IDW can currently protray.

So let's go through the Legends one by one (there's three so far) and see what we can find out about this nebulous, fan-wank universe.

LEGENDS #1

Anguirus: This is interesting... Anguirus is shown being completely dwarfed by Destroyah... and slightly smaller than the King himself. It appears that Anguirus is retaining his 60m height, which makes him half the size of Destroyah and a little more than half the size of Godzilla. Also, this is important, we're told that Anguirus has lost every battle he's ever fought, and moreover, we're SHOWN three of the battles. The first being a run-in with "kaiju alpha," Godzilla, in what appears to be Gyakushu-Goji form. It's clear what Matt's trying to say here. We also see Anguirus getting bloodied by Gigan and dropped by King Ghidorah. DAM didn't happen, but stock footage from that fight did appear in Godzilla vs. Gigan, so it's very close to counting. We also see Anguirus do his rolling thunder attack, something he never did in the showa days.

Destroyah: Same size, only seen in it's final form. Declared second only to Kaiju-Alpha in power (this is Godzilla, by the way). Assuming the events of the first movie took place, it still means that there is prior knowledge of Destroyah, meaning either it survived it's first appearance or this is a SECOND Destroyah. However, the events of Godzilla vs. Destroyah can't have happened because "kaiju-alpha" is referred to as both the 1955 creature and the current Godzilla... so Godzilla didn't die, and that REALLY isn't Junior.

Godzilla: It's becoming clear that at some point Godzilla must have increased in size. Also, with Godzilla exuding such an aura of fear, he was clearly not a super hero in the 70's. So, how did Godzilla vs. Gigan play out in this universe? Anguirus couldn't even team up with Godzilla, because the humans in this story are surprised Godzilla didn't attack him. And these guys are professional monster-fighters, they'd have a record of Godzilla and Anguirus teaming up, and they DO know about Anguirus's battles with Gigan and King Ghidorah. I'm thinking maybe Anguirus got trashed up a bit when the initial signal tape played, and then was unconscious by the time Godzilla got there. In the late 70's, a russian nuclear sub is sunk by Godzilla, and he reaches his current, heisei-scaled size. Something like that.

Gigan: Matt is trying to tell us we should acknowledge GvsG as more or less canon. Hence, Gigan is a Nebula M Cyborg kaiju who kicked the shit out of Anguirus, but couldn't handle Godzilla. Did Zone Fighter finally kill him in this timeline? I wouldn't think so.

King Ghidorah: So, now we know that, at least in some capacity, King Ghidorah enacted his role in GvsG in this timeline. This makes him the showa iteration, but also softens him a bit. See, the original showa KG was a super terro-beast that was too powerful for even the Garogans to handle. Here, as we assume the super-hero shenanigans of the 70's didn't happen, and KG didn't die in 1999, we have a confused, lonely space monster moving from world to world destroying for no reason but not particularly enjoying his life. Once he comes to earth, he tends to stay here. Sure, he may have been chased off once or twice, but we know he lives on Monster Island now, and is content to live there, even if maybe Mothra has to tell him what-for every once in a while.

Normally, it would be hard to tell just from the shape of the teeth... but those sure do look like fangs to me. but maybe I'm dead wrong, either way the homage is obvious.

So far, the Legends series has been telling us that a vast assortment of random, applicable movies count, but each time they drastically change the story and mix up the elements so that the end result, the story we're seeing in the comic, is both referential and a fresh new take. I'm totally digging the shit out of it. Moving on:

LEGENDS #2

Here we only see Rodan and a baby Rodan. This time he looks like the Heisei one, but there's no reason to believe he's a different creature or a different size.

We know that the egg was found 2 years before the rest of the events of the comic. We see the baby Rodan hatch at the end, and the adult fly it back to Monster Island with it (and that kid as well). There isn't much to go on about when the story takes place here...

So, if you want an explanation about why the G&G Rodan is showa-based and this one is heisei-based, you could say that the baby Rodan in this comic is the adult in G&G. But, of course, there's no real need to do that. Each of these are effectively stand alone stories, and I don't really expect the art to match up 100%.

Basically, though, we do know there are two Rodans. So either the baby in this one IS the adult in G&G and the previous adult died, or this comic happened in 2011 or so and the baby is still too young to go out and knock over buildings. OR it happened AFTER G&G. It would need to be 2 years later though, so 2013 at the earliest.

This is the weakest of the three so far and it has the least amount of impact. So it's not much of a big deal.

And now we get to...

LEGENDS #3

Miki: She says she's fought off Godzilla SUCCESSFULLY before. Now, maybe she's exaggerating her "victory" in Godzilla vs. Biollante, but then again, maybe she's not. Furthermore, despite us already knowing Destroyah is a known entity in this timeline and did NOT kill Godzilla (we are shown this again in a referential panel in this issue, lest you think I'm implying something that isn't there), but Miki's main plot in GvsD is that she begins losing her powers and connection to Godzilla and Junior. Here, she's totes on her game. What's more, she's an adult. We can say that an altered version of her battle with Godzilla happened where she won in 1989, and this is present day, given her current age. Why so long to act on the fact that supers exist in Godzilla's world? Well, considering that there wasn't a serious institute until the 1990's in the heisei timeline while there was already an espionage branch of ESPies in 1974 in showa times, this isn't really a question that I feel deserves an answer.

Mugal: The plot of TOM if unfolding NOW, so obviously this guy has no past in the timeline.

Titanosaurus: No origin or anything given, I LOVE him in this comic. You really get to see him, just... freak the fuck out. He really is just a peaceful dinosaur. If only those darn monkeys would leave him and Tristan alone. :c

Mechagodzilla: See what I mean? There's three Mechagodzilla's now. Two of them are alien. Maybe that means continuity with G&G is broken? Pffft, whatever. As much as we want to see it, remember using Mechagodzilla in this timeline is taboo for nebulous reasons, so the G-Force and alien Mechagodzilla's wont even meet up anyways.

I could put this together in an actual timeline, but for right now i'm tired. Other than the actual timeline we have... the Dark Horse comics and the video games to cover, as well as the Mothra Series (which is important because it includes, obviously, Mothra, but also Fairy Mothra and King Ghidorah, and was a source of a lot of "pfft, yeah right"s about word of god regarding the heisei timeline before GFW happened).

The Who of What, Now?

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